December 31, 2008

Department of Valedictions: Lefty Bloggers Reflect on W

Did you know that Bush is still president? It's true. BUT NOT FOR VERY MUCH LONGER.

Bloggenfreude at Agitprop mourns W's passing. "We will never see his like again."

As a lefty blogger, I will miss him. Sure he’s a dangerous
sociopath, a pathological liar, and a national embarrassment. But he’s
also The Decider, The Commander Guy, and Commander Codpiece. Think about that as January 20, 2009 approaches....

The photographic tributes are particularly choice. We recommend clicking.

Meanwhile, Bush is STILL PRESIDENT, so where is he now? Cactus at Angry Bear asks why Bush needs a vacation RIGHT NOW.

I realize he doesn't have a boss and he's not accountable to
anyone, but does he really need another vacation when he's leaving
office in less than a month? Is presidenting poorly such a tough job?

This has gotten ridiculous. With the new conflagration
in Gaza, the Bush presidency has now become a parody of a failure....Peace of some sort in the
Middle East has been one of those presidential yardsticks since at
least Jimmy Carter, and the measure of our current Leader of the Free
World, this demi-man, this Bush rests somewhere between blithe neglect and outright hostility to anything that stinks of "peace."....

Meanwhile, over here, this is another not-so-abstract example of
just how fucked we've become as a nation, how impotent, how
unimportant. We've only got three weeks left of this madness, of being
led by these criminally arrogant and incompetent bastards. What the
fuck else could happen? What the fuck else can? At this point, all bets
are off on whether or not the nation can survive until January 20.
Shit, we should just go around expecting another terrorist attack, a
plague ravaging a city, a goddamned black hole swallowing the entire
planet. It wouldn't even be surprising.

Princess Sparkle Pony discusses the surge---that is to say, the surge in demand across the Middle East for the shoe which the Iraqi journalist hurled at Bush. The owner of the factory has had to take on extra staff. Sadly, it is an exceptionally ugly shoe. But PSP has a whole gallery of Mideastern shoe-based art on display at his blog. For example. Also.

Oh. And Bundy never shot a friend in the face while drunk. So score one for Ted.

Apparently the latest spin from ex-Bush staffers is that Katrina brought down the Bush administration. Mustang Bobby:

Ex-Bush aides are tellingVanity Fair that Hurricane Katrina knocked the wind out of the Bush administration and it never recovered....So all the missteps, ineptness, and outright lies and partisan hackery
that came before -- Abu Ghraib, Valerie Plame, Teri Schiavo, Social
Security reform, warrantless wiretapping -- were okay, but then along
comes a hurricane and it's all ruined? Nice try....

Nothing that happens is
their fault. They have raised the culture of victimhood to a high art,
and the Republicans, the Party of Personal Responsibility, the folks
who tell everyone else to grow up and suck it up, are blaming their
failure on a natural disaster....

The impending end of our 8 year odyssey into the depths of the imperial
criminal Presidency of Emperor George W. Bonaparte has caused many
former loyalists to reflect on where it all went wrong. While the more
bitter of us would say "when he took the oath of office the first time"
these scholars, aiders, and abetters have decided to take a different
path. They have chosen a moment where they thought it all went pear
shaped. Not 9/11 or the months the administration spent ignoring intel
on terrorism and 9/11, not the war in Iraq, not declaring victory in
Iraq before the war was over, not politicizing every aspect of
government, not out CIA agents because their husbands point out
inconvenient facts, not stonewalling every investigation and pardoning
buddies that get convicted, not putting sugar in the economy's gastank
then setting it on fire in the middle of a busy intersection, no they
have chosen Katrina as the place where the Bush Presidency went wrong....

But Katrina isn't where it all went wrong guys, it's just where people
realized "Oh shit, he really doesn't give a fuck or know or care or
anything" and moved him from the "just a shitty President" category
into the "worst President ever/may be actively trying to destroy the
country" column.....Katrina is just where
they realized he doesn't how to do anything and started to actively
hate him for it.

Flory at Whiskey Fire doesn't think there is any point in searching for a rational geopolitical motive behind the Iraq invasion.

[T]here simply isn't one. There really was no single reason or coherent
set of reasons why this nation had to invade a fifth rate military
power that posed no threat to our national interests. Rather there was
a perfect storm of obsessions, hidden agendas and garden variety
self-interest that intersected in Baghdad....

So Flory proposes a list of nonrational and flat-out irrational reasons, including (but not limited to):

Halliburton and oil.
Dick Cheney might be a late nite punchline, but he's also been the
single most powerful vice president evah -- and he ran Haliburton. The
Bush family made a lot of money in the oil bidness. Controlling access
to the world's second biggest proven oil reserves really wasn't
incidental to the decision....

The intellectual vacuum at the center. Bush is an easily manipulated boob who thinks he's an intellectual (witness this howler). There's nobody on the planet easier to play than that guy.

There simply is no possibility that any
Bush, apparently, will ever voluntarily relinguish the saving graces of
living in a bubble no matter how much reality intrudes or how often the
bubble is assaulted by facts. Leave us take for a moment Laura Bush's response in an interview when she was asked about the infamous shoe-throwing incident.

[S]he said the incident reflects change in Iraq.

"As bad as the incident is, in my view, it is a sign that Iraqis feel a lot freer to express themselves," she said.

Uh-huh. There's always a positive spin you can put on
everything. Sure the insurrection and IED's are dangerous and people
get hurt but on the other hand the Iraqis are feeling free to express
themselves through explosives.